Rick Wilson Shrugs Off X Ban After ‘Kill Tesla’ Post: People Who Didn’t Read the Article Having a ‘Snowflake Bullsh*t Moral Panic’
Pool via AP
Lincoln Project founder Rick Wilson laughed off getting permanently suspended from X, formerly Twitter, telling Mediaite he was fine leaving Elon Musk’s social media platform over what he called “snowflake bullshit moral panic” from people who didn’t read the article he had posted.
Wilson’s Substack post, titled “Kill Tesla, Save The Country” had a subheading of “Elon has a weak spot. Attack.” The featured image of the post was a Tesla Cybertruck engulfed in flames outside of Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas on New Year’s Day after the owner killed himself and rigged the vehicle with explosives. Seven bystanders had “minor injuries,” according to local authorities.
The headline and image were unquestionably “provocative,” Wilson acknowledged in a phone conversation with Mediaite, but the text of the article advocated for legal and “peaceful” “[c]orporate pressure campaigns” to make the Tesla brand “socially and financially toxic.”
“Musk’s power and wealth are inseparable from Tesla’s absurdly inflated stock price,” Wilson wrote in the article. “If the Tesla bubble pops, so does Elon’s ability to keep throwing money around like a drunken Russian oligarch in a Macao casino,” like Musk did to support President Donald Trump’s re-election and continues to leverage over his ownership of X.
“Think about peaceful (and very public) protests at Tesla showrooms,” he continued, because potential buyers won’t want to “waltz in for a test drive when the dealership’s ringed by protestors holding signs about Elon’s Nazi-curious Twitter behavior.”
The list of activities he encouraged his readers to consider included buying electric vehicles that were not Teslas; using social media posts to link “every excess and insanity of DOGE and Elon to the brand;” having Tesla stock owners file shareholder lawsuits, encouraging blue states to end their subsidies, tax breaks, and government purchases of Tesla vehicles; and supporting state and local government pension funds to divest from Tesla stock.
“Tesla is Elon, and Elon is Tesla. You can’t separate them,” wrote Wilson. “Break Tesla, break Elon. Break Elon, break Trump.”
The article itself does not call for violence or vandalism against anyone, but nonetheless, there was a swarm of outrage from the right against the post — mostly with posts that shared a screenshot of the article’s headline and featured photo but not a link or any of the text. Fox News aired an image of the headline and photo several times Wednesday and Thursday but did not discuss the article’s content. As one example, Fox News anchor Harris Faulkner mentioned reports about Tesla vehicles and showrooms being targeted with vandalism and arson, said “some Democratic lawmakers are endorsing that violence,” and immediately read the headline of Wilson’s article:
Chaya Raichik’s Libs of TikTok account posted a screenshot of Wilson’s article and called it “domestic terrorism,” drawing a “What the hell?” reply from Musk himself. She responded to Musk, “Leftists are so used to getting away with domestic terrorism and violence that at this point they’re comfortable being open about it and don’t fear any repercussions. This needs to change.”
Shortly thereafter, Wilson received an email from X telling him that his account had been suspended for 30 days. He told Mediaite that that original message informed him the suspension would be lifted earlier if he deleted the post, but he was not going to do so. In a YouTube video, Wilson spoke about the article and being suspended from X, mocking the accusations that he was calling for violence.
“You know you’re over the target when they’re shooting back at ya,” said Wilson. “If just little old me with a Substack post can trigger Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, with $300 billion, 700 gazillion bazillion followers on Twitter, and a man who runs the government, it tells you they’re fragile.”
Raichik posted about the suspension, claiming that Wilson had “incited violence and terrorism.” Numerous other posts from right wing critics of Wilson followed a similar theme.
By Thursday, the 30-day suspension had been changed to a permanent ban, Wilson confirmed. He scoffed at his critics, calling it a “right wing bullshit moral panic.”
“They refuse to read the article because they can’t or won’t, so they want their snowflake bullshit moral panic,” he continued.
When asked about the permanent exile for an account where he had amassed over 1.5 million followers, Wilson laughed and said he was shrugging it off. “Elon Musk has so much to worry about — he has a car company going under, rockets that don’t fly right, and millions of people who hate him. Whatever I’m tweeting should be the least of his worries.”
He added that the whole kerfuffle had caused a “Streisand Effect” for the article, where attempts to censor or suppress information instead draw more attention to it. The Substack post had originally been written “just as a throwaway post” to jot down some ideas, but the controversy had spiked traffic to it, brought “about 16,000 new subscribers” as of Wednesday evening. He had also gotten calls “from people with the money and resources to make happen” his suggestions in the post. He has been growing his audiences on other platforms (as of today, he has almost 500,000 followers on Bluesky and nearly 350,000 on Threads), Wilson said, commenting that he would not miss how Twitter was “full of Nazis” and other hate and toxicity.
